


For the Love of Anung un Rama

by Tyellas



Category: Hellboy - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mythic!Hellboy, Story within a Story, are Hellboy and Liz together here? that's up to the reader, mentions for Kate Alice and Anastasia, something different
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-26 21:56:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18186239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: A fireside tale of a vengeful goddess, three helpful Fates, and Hellboy’s ultimate destiny. And...perhaps...the source of Liz Sherman’s fiery powers.





	For the Love of Anung un Rama

**Author's Note:**

> A story that came to be on a dark and stormy night! I've held onto it until March 23, 2019 - Hellboy Day. Thank you to @bookscorpion for the lovely cover!

Cover courtesy of @bookscorpion!

* * *

 

It was an all right BPRD mission, he thought, that ended with a meal and a fireside.

After the paranormal strangeness he’d seen on this trip, it was reassuring that his hosts were human. His own vividly-hued body, his monstrous face, his strange abilities all made him something other. His soul had enough humanity to be grateful for their relaxed hospitality.

They were all grounding themselves with food, drinks, and chatter. Their fire was outside, by the edge of a midnight forest, with the arc of the Milky Way clear overhead. It was the perfect setting for telling stories long into the night.

In the firelight, one of his hosts drank from a bottle of red wine, passed it his way. As he sipped in turn, the woman’s partner stood to stretch. This other woman had not touched the wine. Her voluminous brocade robe, her half-braided black mane, could have come from any moment in human history.

Meeting his gaze, the dark-haired beauty smiled, slyly. When she spoke, it seemed she had picked his thoughts from the air.

“This night feels timeless, does it not? I have a story you might like. It is a women’s story…but it is not as if I have lived in a woman’s bounds, these past years. And something tells me you should hear it. For it is a tale of the demon that sorcerers name Anung un Rama. The one called, in these times, Hellboy.”

She lifted her chin. The changed angle sent black shadows to hollow her eyesockets and her cheeks, made her knowing smile sinister. “Shall I tell it? It is not long.”

A chill touched him. Before he could refine why, the woman beside him gave his shoulder an enthused whack. "This is gonna be great! Her stories are awesome. You really _visualize_ them."

When he gave in, murmured _of course_ , the standing storyteller began. 

“My grandmother is from Persia. She told me this story. Which her mother told her, and her mother before that, in the days of the great alchemists...”

* * *

 The great goddess of the delta made us what we were. Our lands were the curve of the goddess’ belly on the world, marked by the delta of the sacred rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Those who dwelled in her fertile crescent were blessed. We were the first humans to raise temples and cities, to write and calculate. 

The years passed in their thousands. Empires rose and empires fell. The great goddess took many names, but stayed supreme. Until a cult arose on the crescent’s edge. This cult traduced the great goddess. They decried her beauty and her pride, her lovers strange and many, her passage between life and death. The weak and jealous spread this cult into the lesser lands. They sent their crusaders against us, and declared the great goddess the Whore of Babylon.

At this, the the great goddess was wroth.

All knowledge that came to the delta came to her. In those years, every trader in the world passed through her crescent. All that the cultists, the alchemists, and the sorcerers knew, of dragons and demons, was hers. She learned from them how the humans’ world was foretold to end: beneath the gaze of a lord of Hell, crowned with flame. Anung un Rama.

The great goddess perceived Anung un Rama with her divine sight. Born of a demon king and a human sorceress, he united the divine and the human – as did she. His form was great and powerful, like to the aurochs, king of bulls. He was worthy of her desire.

She gathered her power about her and left the delta of the rivers, progressing north, to the lands he would claim first. Plague and black death did she sow on her angry way. For Anung un Rama was not there to be found.

At last the great goddess came to the cold North, where no trees grew.

The goddesses who birthed the world have no kin, but there are some of like kind to them. Three of those met the great goddess there: figures of fate. At the edge of the great ice that caps the world, one of them spun fate’s thread. One of them wound out its length. And one cut its ends, a snip for each life on this earth. It was a mighty meeting.

The great goddess asked these fates her question. “Where is Anung un Rama? For I would end this world that degrades me. I will make men's tale true, and take as my lover their devil and their antichrist, their beast of the earth, their Apocalypse.”

“Anung un Rama,” said the maiden, “is not yet born. I have not yet spun the thread for him.”

“Return to your green delta, and stay one of us,” said the winder. “In your absence, your people turn to younger, foolish gods.”

“It is too late for that,” said the crone. She snapped her shears. “Your power will fall to ashes long before he comes.”

The great goddess screamed. The earth was rent. Amidst its fumes and fire, she cried, “I must endure, for I will love Anung un Rama, and end this world thereby. You, who measure out lives, how can I do this?”

The maiden who spun said, “Leave with me your fire. This shall be reborn as a mortal woman. And Anung un Rama shall love her, in his hour.”

The great goddess willed it so. Her passions burned before her, a woman fair, with hair like a house ablaze. The maiden lifted the spindle, and she was gone, a gleam of fire along the spindle’s point.

The mother who wound said, “If you wish to have a second chance, leave with me your magic. This too shall be reborn as a mortal woman. And Anung un Rama shall love her, as well, in his hour.”

The great goddess willed it so. Her enchantment spun before her, a woman promising, with hair that coiled like the smoke of incense. The winder opened arms to her, and she was gone, a sparkle in the winder’s outstretched hands.

The crone who cut said, “Will you cast the dice a third time? Then leave with me your knowledge. This shall be reborn as a mortal woman. And Anung un Rama shall love her, too, in his hour.”

The great goddess willed it so. Her knowledge shone before her, a woman bright, with hair like the light of a scholar’s lamp. The crone reached out a withered hand to her, and she was gone, a glimmer on the edge of the crone’s shears.

What was left of the great goddess? Her core. The darkness from which we are born, and to which we return in death. The great void of the universe, unlit by the sun of passion, the moon that frames our magic, the stars that call us to make patterns and keep time.

In her woe, the great goddess cried out. “I who was full am empty. I who was the font flow with tears. For the love of Anung un Rama, I am naught but Death.” Thus she grieved.

But the crone spoke again. “Yes, you are Death, the end and the night. So it is decreed. And this I see: that Anung un Rama shall love you, last and best of all.”

The great goddess was consoled. She lay in the great cold to rest and wait. The Fates lifted their tools, and a sheet of ice rolled over her resting place, blanketing her in a thousand ells of cold purity. There the great goddess would sleep until Anung un Rama’s hour, when his coming would rouse her four parts.

When will that be, you may ask? When the great cold is no more, and the great bergs of ice that cap this world are gone. In his time they will melt, that the world may end in fire. For many tellings of this tale, to say such spoke of a future far. But to say it today, well…

With the great goddess of the delta gone, the land between two rivers was no more the heart of humanity. Men learned what they should not, took up new cults. The alchemists dwindled and the trade routes shifted. War upon war has battered the sacred places. Great evils have escaped.

And Anung un Rama shall soon have his hour.

* * *

The storyteller spread her hands, bowed her head. Her tale was complete.

The woman beside him lifted the wine in a toast. “That was beautiful. Really beautiful. There’s a lot to unpack in it, about empowerment and identity and – ”

The storyteller said, archly, “Ah, but is it true? Our guest can tell us.”

They both turned to Abe Sapien.

Abe thought of the legend who wasn’t there now, hadn’t been in the story at all, save as a sorcerous name. His monstrous best friend, who made devilry into something good: Hellboy. More, Abe could tally up the women he knew Hellboy loved, passionately or as a brother, as a friend.

There was Anastasia Bransfield, the brilliant archaeologist. Kate Corrigan, the folklore professor. Alice Monaghan, touched by faerie enchantment. Most of all, Liz Sherman. Her troubled history. How hard Liz struggled to be human, empowered and tormented by her mysterious pyrokinesis. Her fire.

“Almost,” Abe said.

Both women laughed. The storyteller curled up beside her friend, who said, “Hey, there‘s a shooting star!”

All three of them looked up. “Ah, lovely,” the storyteller purred. They watched the meteor’s reddish trail, cutting through the tropical night sky, towards the world’s northeast.

Abe was glad of the sudden silence, happy to protect Hellboy and Liz by keeping his thoughts to himself. Glad, too, that he could not think of a woman to match the dark slumber of the great goddess. Though he feared that he would, some day. Or that Hellboy, far away from this warning, might meet her, all too soon.

Where was Hellboy now? What was happening to him? Abe didn’t know. Hellboy had left the BPRD, gone wandering. Would Hellboy recognize and reject his fate when he met her? Or would he let her into his heart, so that she could tear it out, and end the world?

The falling star curved over the horizon. And Abe Sapien wondered.

**Author's Note:**

> It's a story all about Hellboy - though it turns out Hellboy's not in it. I hope that's OK, considering he gets a whole movie pretty soon.
> 
> A few other things...  
> * Anastasia Bransfield - Memorably dissed as "that woman" by Dr. Bruttenholm, a long-term on-again off-again lover and ally to Hellboy - more in the novels than the comics.  
> * "But what about when, in the BPRD comics, the villain Memnan Saa told Liz she was the Black Goddess?" Yeah, what about that? Interesting, yes?  
> * Do I have opinions about the latest run of the BPRD comics? I've read Issue #14 and HOO YEAH.  
> * I also have opinions about the fact that Liz hasn't had her own comic series!  
> * This is a little sequel moment to my Abe Sapien story, _Day of Epiphany_ , which has Lots More Abe.


End file.
